It’s a bouncing dot short of a karaoke oratorio: Space Coast Symphony Orchestra’s annual Singalong Messiah is taking place in Vero this year. Saturday at 7 p.m., hundreds of singers are going to divide up into sections at the Vero Beach High School Performing Arts Center – soprano, alto, tenor and bass. Then, with scores they bring from home or pick up on arrival, they will join together in Handel’s Christmas classic, backed up by the orchestral musicians.
This is the ninth Messiah singalong staged by Space Coast and they’ve all gotten a great response. Anyone can participate in the free event, but many who show up have sung the Messiah many times before. Aaron Collins, the orchestra’s artistic director, will be conducting the singers. He says it’s been a huge hit in Melbourne and he’s hoping to make it a tradition in Vero, too.
And since there won’t actually be lyrics crawling across a screen, participants can either bring their own score or use those provided that night. The concert is free.
If, like me, you call Miami City Ballet your own, you’ll be proud to see that soloist Sara Esty has the lead in the national tour of “An American in Paris” opening at West Palm’s Kravis Center Tuesday. The 2015 musical choreographed by ballet world icon Christopher Wheeldon featured Esty in the ensemble, then in the lead on Broadway and in Paris. It won four Tony awards last year.
Garen Scribner, who trained at the North Carolina School of the Arts and Boston Ballet before dancing with the San Francisco Ballet, stars as Jerry Mulligan, the role Gene Kelley immortalized on film. The show runs through next Sunday.
In a couple of weeks, Riverside Children’s Theatre’s annual “Nutcracker in Swingtime” is having its last production before being retired next year. That’s sure to be a disappointment for many who’ve enjoyed RCT director of dance Adam Schnell’s original production these past seven years. But there’s good news: Next year, Schnell’s professional ballet company Ballet Vero Beach will take over with a wholly new production, “Nutcracker on the Indian River.”
Meanwhile, Saturday, there’s a Tea Up for the Nutcracker golf tournament and fashion show at Oak Harbor. Then, on Sunday, Dec. 18, after the RCT student dancers perform “Swingtime!” that Friday and Saturday, there’ll be a fund-raising Champagne gala for the final production. It will feature an all-star cast including former student stars Megan Callahan, Shannon Maloney and Patrick Schlitt, plus a plum of a performance by Camilo Rodriguez and a first-time-ever local performance by Schnell.
The National Touring Company of “Fame the Musical” comes to the Sunrise Theatre in Fort Pierce this weekend. One of two stage versions created from the 1980 movie and subsequent TV series, “Fame the Musical” premiered in Miami in 1988, the first professional show at the Coconut Grove Playhouse. The tour stops at Sunrise Sunday for a 7 p.m. performance.
At the outdoor music venue Terra Fermata in downtown Stuart, hope for mild weather Saturday night when the mesmerizing, freight train-force roots band Ghost of Paul Revere heads south on tour from Portland, Maine. These four songwriting string players – guitars, banjos and mandolins, sauced with harmonica and vocal harmonies – have gotten serious acclaim, worth a Google to speak for themselves. They describe their sound as “holler-folk,” and it’s stirring stuff by my standards. They won Best in Maine at the 2014 New England Music Awards, and made their Newport Folk Festival debut last year. Their first full-length album charted on Billboard and they’ve got a new one coming out next year.
The A.E. Backus Museum and Gallery has commissioned a book by art scholar Natasha Kuzmanovic on the famous Fort Pierce artist. The just-published 270-page, $75 volume “Tropical Light” features images of Backus’ best-known works, most of them luminous landscapes rendered through his mastery of the palette knife. A reception for Kuzmanovic is taking place at the museum, located near the waterfront of Fort Pierce’s thriving downtown, Friday from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m.